happy father's day

We hope all you fathers had a wonderful day. Peter says he enjoyed his. We were planning to visit a church in town, but we all overslept until 9:30 (how great is that?!!) and couldn't make it. Instead we had a relaxed Father's Day brunch and gave Daddy his gift... a new outdoor volleyball to replace his well-loved but no longer functional one. He also received beautiful artwork from Joshua and Patience and a card from Mommy. Garty didn't show any appreciation at all for his new papa, but we expect that he'll be more thankful next year. The afternoon plan was to head to the zoo, with or without Daddy depending on which sounded more fun to him. He thought about it for a few hours and decided to go along. It was a fun 2 hour trip. They had a special reptile exhibit for the weekend, so the kids got a chance to see "plenty snakes" up close and personal. They're simultaneously terrified and enthralled by snakes. We didn't see any on our first trip, and they've been talking about going back to find them ever since. They have a great playground in the zoo, and both of the older kids climbed a rope ladder on their own for their first time, surprising us with their bravery. Everyone spent a long time on the swings. You should have heard them all giggling when we pushed them high! Joshua even learned how to make a swing go by himself and received lots of praise from his proud Mommy before heading home. After enjoying one of Peter's top 10 favorite home cooked dinners (yes, we actually have an official list), we started discussing our favorite desserts and spent at least 30 minutes making a list of our respective favorites from my recipe box and our travels. This may sound like a ridiculous activity to some of you, but we've got a pretty serious obsession with food. After much discussion and agonizing, we narrowed the list to our top 15. Of course, all good things must come to an end, and an otherwise great day ended with one child (who will go unnamed) flooding the bathroom floor 2 feet from the toilet because waiting an extra 30 seconds to go was evidently expecting too much. The wet child then had to clean up the floor before getting a quick bath. After all 3 kids were sound asleep, we drowned our frustrations in a brownie sundae (which was on both of our lists).